Part of the explanation lies in the hiring process. At the company I work we have a ton of useless people - 'office manager', 'coordinator' and other titles that don't mean anything - which make you wonder how they got the job in the first place. Usually answer is they are hired because they know someone at the company, and it's so easy to get somebody who has no skills to fit into paper pushing jobs. Of course there isn't anybody to oversee all this. The chief executives aren't checking if some guy in the building is really needed there. At every step down from CEO somebody is getting hired by someone because they need a job.